Extracurricular Top Of Texas University Images

Extracurricular Top Of Texas University Images

Film Scholar Ponders Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra

In this week’s post, Mark Gallagher, author of Another Steven Soderbergh Experience (UT Press, March 2013), ponders the renowned filmmaker’s rumored retirement and discusses recent projects, including the new, much-talked-about film Behind the Candelabra…

'Gallagher on Soderbergh'

by Mark Gallagher

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is retiring. Or maybe he isn’t. His most recent work, Behind the Candelabra (2013), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21 and debuted on HBO television five days later. Those who follow news and discourse around American independent cinema, around festivals such as Cannes, or around Hollywood and entertainment industries generally may have heard about Soderbergh’s plans in any number of venues since actor Matt Damon mentioned that imminent retirement in a late-2010 interview. The artist-author-filmmaker--“director” is hardly a sufficient description--has not, as one might have imagined, retreated quietly into the shadows. Aside from both fending off and confirming the reports (with caveats), Soderbergh has been dizzyingly active in the ensuing period. He directed a play in Australia, and made a film with the cast (a film that has an IMDB listing and even earns ratings from its users, but which Soderbergh has claimed was never intended for release). He has taken up serious painting and photography. He opened a Twitter account and has composed (or perhaps is still composing) a serial novel called Glue there. He recently gave a widely discussed address at the San Francisco International Film Festival excoriating Hollywood’s present economic logic, which in his view has made films without blockbuster aspirations largely unviable for studios. And to fill up any remaining spare time or perhaps to clean out his attic, he has launched a website, Extension765, selling an eclectic mix of memorabilia, esoteric t-shirts and--why not?--imported Bolivian liquor.



And lest we forget, since his impending retirement was announced, he made somewhere between four and six features (the number varies depending how we define those works). The pandemic thriller Contagion (2011) did solid business for Warner Bros., though the minimalist action film and independent Haywire (2011) did not ignite on its winter 2012 release. Summer 2012 was far kinder to Soderbergh’s career, with the modestly budgeted male stripper drama Magic Mike (2012) delivering huge returns. (The $7 million film was #26 at the U.S. box office in 2012, edging out The Bourne Legacy, which cost in the neighborhood of the $125 million.) This past winter saw the release of another topical thriller from Soderbergh, the pharmaceutical whodunit Side Effects (2013). Side Effects did lukewarm business, but Soderbergh had been part of another major success the previous summer, the megahit (and de facto independent release) The Hunger Games (2012), on which he served, remarkably if to quite limited fanfare, as second-unit director, handling background scenes while director (and longtime friend) Gary Ross worked with the principals on the logistically complex production.



Side Effects may stand as Soderbergh’s last studio release, at least for the foreseeable future. But it was certainly not his last motion picture. As mentioned, his most recent outing as director, the Liberace biopic and troubled romance Behind the Candelabra, debuted at Cannes on May 21. Is this his last film? A better question might be, is it a film at all? In the U.S. it premiered (and continues to play) on cable channel HBO, with no theatrical release planned. IMDB still classifies it as “film” rather than “television,” though, and it will earn a big-screen release in various European countries, Australia, and more in the weeks to come. (In Britain, where I live, it opens on June 7, distributed by the independent Entertainment One.)



Behind the Candelabra makes a wonderful capstone to Soderbergh’s screen work to date. In its subject and aesthetics, it extends many of the interests on view in his previous film and television output. And as a hard-to-categorize work, it demonstrates further Soderbergh’s remarkable ability to bypass conventional exhibition categories altogether. (In the bygone era of 2006, some will recall, Soderbergh’s micro-budget feature Bubble riled exhibitors thanks to its simultaneous multiplatform release in theaters, on DVD, on video-on-demand, and on the HDNet Movies subscription TV channel; this once controversial experiment continued with the two-part Che (2008) and with The Girlfriend Experience [2009]).

As a text, Behind the Candelabra works in compelling ways as both film and television. Its generic status as a period biopic (spanning the late 1970s to the mid-1980s) helps it sit comfortably alongside other made-for-television productions, as does its limited scale, with Las Vegas and Los Angeles its only settings (though it was partly filmed in Louisiana). On the other hand, its glitzy production design and ensemble of actors, particularly longtime A-listers Michael Douglas (as Liberace) and Matt Damon (as the pianist’s young lover, employee, and eventual adversary Scott Thorson), position it well as cinema. Its interest in the showbiz-and-spectacle milieu of Las Vegas, and Vegas’ close kinship with Los Angeles, make it legible too as a cousin of the successful Ocean’s films (2001–2007).



Behind the Candelabra also gives Soderbergh a platform for dialogues with other forms of cinema and entertainment, including stage performance (Soderbergh’s other future plans include more stage drama, this time directing a play in the U.S.), traces of intertexts such as 1941’s Citizen Kane (with Damon’s Thorson, confined in an older lover’s palatial home, echoing the bored Susan Kane), and even classical Hollywood musicals (with the concluding scene featuring a musical number that recalls 1930s and 1940s Busby Berkeley films, or perhaps the lavish song-and-dance set pieces that Broadway and other producers have staged in the ensuing decades). Its presentation on HBO even allows Soderbergh once again to play with disused company logos. The televised Behind the Candelabra opens with a version of HBO’s 1970s channel ident, just as last year’s Magic Mike had recycled the Warner Bros. studio ident of the 1970s.



Film academics, cinephiles and fans invested in filmmakers may overstate the significance, or at least the visibility, of particular creative agents. In advance of Behind the Candelabra’s debut, HBO circulated a short making-of featurette that mentioned Soderbergh exactly once, late in the segment and not even naming his creative role. Eagle-eyed viewers can see him glide by repeatedly in the segment, operating a camera but never identified, let alone interviewed. Behind the Candelabra’s promotion and publicity has focused chiefly on its subject, the flamboyant gay (but officially closeted) entertainer Liberace, and on the performances of co-stars Douglas and Damon. Beyond its possible legibility as a Soderbergh work, we may consider Behind the Candelabra as a gay movie for heterosexuals. Even as studios avowedly dismissed the project as “too gay,” it showcases a romance between two men who have resolutely heterosexual offscreen personas (and onscreen ones too, with neither Douglas nor Damon having played explicitly gay roles before). But even this camouflage is arguably characteristic of Soderbergh. Magic Mike, a heterosexual movie for gay men (and straight women), put stars Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey into G-strings (or less). And Behind the Candelabra is remarkable too for Soderbergh’s ability to draw complementary performances from his leads. Douglas plays another in a series of high-idling professionals (as in the iconic Wall Street [1987], Falling Down [1993], and Soderbergh’s own Traffic [2000]), and Damon delivers a variation on his buff everyman physicality. With numerous (if fleeting) episodes of anal sex and plenty of hot-tub pillow-talking, the pair’s relationship goes well beyond the male bonding of the Ocean’s series or Soderbergh’s other films, but it continues in the vein of stylization and casual realism that has been a hallmark of his work for the past decade or more.





Retired or not, Soderbergh still ranks highly on industry power indexes. His career--concluded, on hiatus, or speeding along--also has much to tell us about the flexibility and boundaries of screen industries and artforms. Anyone interested in multi-hyphenate chameleon-provocateur-opinionator-artists can only hope that Soderbergh remains in circulation for many years to come. 

Author John Prados on his new book, the CIA, and NSA

John Prados, author of the new book The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (September 2013), answers a few questions on the breaking news about the NSA’s current activities—and how his book foreshadowed it.

How does your forthcoming book, The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power, intersect with the current breaking news about the NSA?

The stunning revelation that people all over the globe—including both Americans and citizens of many other lands, innocently phoning or e-mailing their friends and associates—are being monitored by the National Security Agency (NSA) was explicitly predicted in my book. The book also anticipated the U.S. government response: blaming the messenger rather than repairing the massive transgression against individual rights and personal freedom entailed in these NSA surveillance programs.

What specifically are you referring to when you outline the NSA’s activities?

I refer collectively here to a group of related NSA projects by the name of one of them, “Prism.” That initiative has gathered data on individuals’ use of telephones, including the point of origin, identities of people calling, time of day, duration of conversations, and numbers and locations of recipients. The NSA collection is chilling—in the single month of March 2013 the agency vacuumed up no fewer than 97 billion bits of data—and they have been at it for the better part of a decade. A related effort collects the contents of electronic messages sent from persons in the United States to foreign addressees. This intelligence program dwarfs the NSA wiretapping and surveillance efforts of the 1960s and 1970s, aimed at American citizens, which proved so controversial they were subjected to congressional investigation. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was enacted specifically to curb this kind of abuse.

Have acts such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 or other forms of oversight been at all effective in limiting these abuses?

Such reforms as were instituted in the 1978 act have been progressively dismantled, in a process that began even before 9/11. Following that tragedy, the government pulled out all the stops with the Patriot Act, plus the 2008 amendments to it. The Family Jewels shows how NSA surveillance and other domestic abuses (by the NSA, CIA, and other elements of U.S. intelligence) sparked fierce controversy in the 1970s and led to the creation of the present American system for intelligence oversight. But the security services have now replicated the abuses on a global scale, as the book documents, and they rely on secrecy to protect themselves from accountability. The Family Jewels argues that abusive actions carried out in secret create “Family Jewels,” scandals waiting to burst out and discredit legitimate intelligence operations. Congressional oversight is not enough. Prism shows the reality that has been so shrouded in secrecy.

How does the government justify the NSA’s activities? For example, has Prism been effective in preventing attacks?

Government officials point to one case in which Prism helped derail a terrorist plot, and to one other where the NSA collection assisted in the criminal investigation of an attack already carried out. This value (two cases) needs to be weighed against the chilling effect of authorities mounting surveillance of all citizens everywhere, gathering trillions of pieces of data. Proportionality is an issue. So is the open violation of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The Family Jewels explores the controversial intelligence activities—then and now—in detail, shows the failures of presidential control and congressional oversight, and illuminates the debilitating effects of secrecy. The book offers a way forward. The Family Jewels furnishes a guide to thinking about the central security issue of our time.

What do you think is the next step? How do we work toward a balance between gathering necessary information and protecting private citizens?

Really we’re talking about two kinds of efforts here. One is at the level of authorization and accountability. In The Family Jewels I discuss creating a mechanism for regular, periodic housecleaning—public reviews of intelligence activities by a board akin to the 9/11 Commission. If intelligence officials knew they would be obliged to answer to the American people, regularly, inevitably, in a forum they could not avoid, that would go a long way toward getting rid of abuses. The other kind of work we need is more gumshoe intelligence efforts. Prism really represents a lazy man’s device. We had a capability, so we found a way to use it. Of the two cases being cited in justifying this overreach, I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the New York subway plot could not have been broken up by more conventional means, and as for the investigation of the Mumbai attack—well, that involved a criminal inquiry after the fact. The FBI and other authorities would have had no difficulty at all in obtaining a proper warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court enabling them to explore all of that individual’s electronic communications, and thus all the material used to obtain his plea. Plus the Mumbai case had nothing to do with breaking up a terrorist plot. If that’s everything the administration can offer in support of Prism, I’d say they’re on awfully thin ice. The bottom line is that the spooks have gone way too far, that the secrecy abets their enterprise, and that it’s time for citizens to sit up and pay attention. “Big Brother” is here, today!

The University of Texas Commencement Speaker

Zeta Tau Alpha- University of Texas member Mallory Garcia
was chosen by the Dean of Students Office to be one of the university commencement speakers.
Our grads are going places!

Commencement is the final ceremony of graduation weekend where everyone gathers in front of our beautiful tower one last time. We sing The Eyes of Texas, yell “TEXAS FIGHT” and soak up our last moments before officially becoming Texas Exes. According to some people I have spoken with, it’s one of UT’s best shows of the year… and now I completely agree with them! Looking back on the entire experience, it still seems so unreal but it will forever be one of my favorite memories of the 40 Acres.

When I first received the e-mail invitation a few weeks before graduation, I was in complete shock. Had I really just been nominated to speak at this year’s Commencement ceremony? What would I say to thousands of graduates and family members? Luckily for me, I have some amazing sisters who helped me feel more excited than afraid about this incredible opportunity. I will never forget the look on Kate Onofrey’s face when I told her about my upcoming speech. Nor will I forget the excitement of Ashley Carlisle, who’s also always been one of my biggest supporters. It was through their excitement and the excitement of others that I began to find excitement in myself to overcome the nerves.

My nomination to speak at commencement came from The Office of the Dean of Students. I have worked for their office for the past two years as a Student Assistant in the Student Organization Center and as an Orientation Advisor for New Student Services. My time with DOS has brought me closer to the university and helped make UT feel more like home. I am beyond grateful for all the amazing mentors and professionals I’ve met who work everyday to improve our experience at students while at UT. 

My experience as a commencement speaker was amazing. I spent my final week in Austin getting to know the other 6 incredible student leaders who were speaking as well. Their contributions to both the university and to their own personal education are beyond anything I could have imagined. They each had their own personal story to tell and I felt a little more connected to them after hearing their wise words in preparation for Saturday.

On Thursday, May 16 during our dress rehearsal I was able to calm my nerves by reading my speech out loud for the first time. Although it was helpful, I was reading to a bunch of empty chairs and couldn’t even fathom speaking in front of thousands of people. As Saturday approached I was excited to know that so many of my sisters would be out there listening and supporting me along with my family and friends. The fact that I was wearing this beautiful teal graduation sash, probably helped a little too J

While giving my speech I looked out to find my family and then immediately focused on the beautiful capital building ahead of me. “…..As we leave here today, I challenge all of you, class of 2013, to understand how capable you are of changing the world, one world at a time.” And just like that, it was all finished. I walked back down to meet all my sisters in line for our final procession into the Main Mall for the ceremony.

I was extremely honored to be one of the seven students chosen to represent the graduating class of 2013. UT has changed my life, which is no surprise because here at the University of Texas at Austin, 

“What Starts Here Changes The World” 

A Note to Future Me...for Father's Day

In a letter to his future self, UT Press sales representative C. J. Hoyt reveals what really makes a successful Father's Day gift—a great book! 

Hey Buddy,

Remember all those tacky gifts we bought Dad for Father's Day? The fancy dress socks. The novelty ties. That one time we gave him Stetson cologne for some reason or another. Well, that's why I'm writing you this letter. I'm guessing we have ourselves a mess of kids by now and we need to set the bar a little higher. We don't want to end up with too many socks in the drawer and smelling like a Sunday at Golden Corral on "our" Father's Day, do we? Heavens to Betsy, no! So, pay close attention.

1. First things first. Breakfast in bed. That's a given.

2. Let's face it, Future Me. We just married a vegetarian, so our barbecue intake is going to be next to nil. The best we can hope for are books with plenty of pictures.

Buy Barbecue Crossroads: Notes & Recipes from a Southern Odyssey

Buy The Salt Lick Cookbook: A Story of Land, Family, and Love

3. By the time you read this letter, I'm guessing we've sat through roughly 150 episodes of Gilmore Girls and now it's time for a detox. Maybe this Father's Day we can sit back and relax to our favorite Western miniseries Lonesome Dove. Then again, we probably don't want to be crying in front of the kids when Deets dies, so I guess we'll just have to settle for the next best thing.

Buy A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove

Buy A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove

4. Even if they do manage to get a handle on this whole global warming thing in the future, Texas will still be one hot tamale come this time of year. How about we send the kids out on the front porch to hand-crank some ice cream while we make ourselves an ice cold margarita or three and toast to a Father's Day well done?

Buy ¡Viva Tequila!: Cocktails, Cooking, and Other Agave Adventures

5. If all else fails, ask for a hoverboard. And if those haven't been invented yet, well, I see no reason in living that long anyways.

Sincerely,



Christopher J. Hoyt